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The land party, travelling light, had made very good time. They had picked up the blazed trail without difficulty, and there had been no dawdling on the way. The only delays (and those slight) had been when Nancy had not thought much of one of Captain Flint’s new blazes and had called a halt while she used her pocket-knife to improve it. They had marched out on the beach at Duckhaven when the little brown sail of the Swallow, a mere spot showing and vanishing among the waves, was still far away, beating out to sea from the south-west corner of the island. Their guides, Titty and Roger, had shown them the little harbour, and the old wrecked boat, and the crabs, though the crabs, as Roger had complained, had been at first inclined to run away. Then Nancy had chosen a place on the shore exactly on a line between the big tree and the end of the reef where the waves were breaking, and they had all worked hard in building the fire that had been so useful in helping Swallow’s pilot to find the way in. Afterwards, while Susan and Peggy had been busy putting green leaves on the fire to make a smoke, Nancy, with Titty and Roger, had done a little exploring on her own account, north along the beach, and had made a discovery of which, by agreement with them, no one said anything that night. Susan had served out a ration of chocolate, but, by the time the Swallow berthed in Duckhaven, everybody was more than ready for a meal.

All hands turned to discharging cargo, and as soon as the water-barrel had been lifted out and chocked up among the rocks in a handy place so that the kettle could be filled at the tap, Susan and Peggy hurried off to the fire with it. Captain Flint fetched them back for a moment, when he had taken all the ballast out of Swallow, so that all hands working together could haul her up the beach above high-water mark, in the tiny cove among the rocks. After that they went back to their cooking. They were going to heat up some pemmican. Meanwhile, Captain Flint and the others were busy with the tent. Nancy had found a good place, with a bit of smooth sand, sheltered from the north-east by the ridge of rock that ran down into the sea. Another rock, poking up out of the sand, gave some shelter on the other side, and, at the back of it, a bit of the main ridge stuck out at just the right height to carry one end of a pole. Captain Flint lashed Swallow’s oars together to make a crutch to carry the other end.

“If only we’d had the saw with us instead of letting you bring it round in Swallow,” said Nancy, “we’d have cut a tree to make a proper ridge-pole. We’ll cut one to-morrow. The mast’s a bit short but it’ll do all right for to-night.”

The mast certainly was rather short, because a good bit of it had to rest on the rock at one end, and some of it had to stick out beyond the oars at the other, but when the old staysail was spread over the top they had a pretty good tent, even if it was small for so many. They decided to cram into it. Of course some of them could have slept inside the old wrecked boat, but they had looked into it and given up the idea, for the wreck was simply boiling with crabs.

“Botheration,” said Nancy. “How are we going to peg the edges?”

“With these,” said Captain Flint, emptying a small bag of wooden tent-pegs on the ground.

“That was the noise I heard last night,” said Titty. “Chipping and chipping. I couldn’t think what it was.”

“And Mr. Duck’s stitched a lot of rope loops into the sail.”

Ten minutes later the tent was ready for the night. Nancy, Titty, and Captain Flint were all inside it, when Roger came hurrying from the fire. He had shouted from there, but no one had heard him, though they were already learning to hear what they were saying in spite of the noise of the surf.

“Kettle’s boiling,” he said. “Susan sent me to tell you to bring the mugs. She and Peggy can’t leave the fire because of the crabs.”

“Why, the crabs aren’t trying to grab the kettle, are they?” said Captain Flint.

“They will go sidling into the fire,” said Roger. “Peggy and I have been fending them off, but the moment anyone looks the other way there’s one of those crabs scorching himself like anything. A whole lot have got burnt in spite of us.”

“Half a minute,” said Captain Flint, “and I’ll come and see what can be done. Try to straighten out that side if you can, Nancy. Howk up those two pegs and shove them in again farther out.”

“I say,” said Roger.

“What do you say?” said Captain Flint.

“Do you think these crabs can be the same sort as the crabs that bit Mr. Duck’s trousers? They seem so much smaller.”

“They’d seem big enough if you were on the island all by yourself,” said Captain Flint, “and anyhow, I bet they’ll have grown a bit when you come to tell your grandchildren about them.”

“Perhaps the night ones are bigger,” said Roger.

SETTLING IN AT DUCKHAVEN

“They probably seemed bigger in the dark. You see the young P.D. hadn’t even got a fire to see them by, and he hadn’t got a whole lot of friends to help scare them off. I don’t wonder he was glad to get away from them.”

It was getting dark quickly now. Captain Flint climbed over the rocks and went up the sandy beach to the fire, to find Peggy and Susan both busy heading off the yellow crabs that looked almost orange-coloured in the light of the flames into which they seemed determined to sidle. A good lot of them had reached the fire and lay scorched and dead round the edge of it, in spite of the two mates’ efforts to save them.

“It’s no good,” said Peggy. “If I turn away for one moment there’s a new one beginning to sizzle.”

“They’re worse than moths,” said Susan, “bobbing into candle flames.”

“We’ll be quit of them for a bit anyhow,” said Captain Flint, and taking a stick from Peggy, he raked away the dead crabs from round the fire and threw them a little way off. Instantly the other crabs lost interest in the fire and turned on the dead bodies of their relations.

Captain Flint hurried back to the tent to help Titty and Nancy to bring along the rest of the mugs.

“Here’s a crab crawling into the tent,” shouted Nancy, just as he was coming down over the rocks.

“Kick it out,” called Captain Flint.

“Don’t hurt it,” said Titty.

But long before supper was over, by that bright fire in the blue dusk on the beach, even Titty’s heart was hardened, in the matter of dealing with the crabs. For the crabs themselves had no hearts at all. They grabbed at each other and tore each other to pieces, and the noise of crunching which they made was horrible in itself. The only way to be rid of them was to throw a few of the corpses away, when the others instantly fell on them, crunching them up and waving their pincers and goggling their eyes. There was nothing to be afraid of for the six Swallows and Amazons and Captain Flint. The crabs were not big enough. They were just nasty, and they would not take “no” for an answer. Nothing seemed to teach them that they were not wanted. All the same Nancy said, “Well, I wish Bill was here. He wouldn’t mind batting them at all.” None of the Swallows and Amazons liked batting crabs, but Gibber was the only one who learnt to be afraid of them. He was amusing himself by poking at one or two of the crabs, picking them up by their shells and throwing them away, while keeping his fingers out of the way of their pincers, when a big crab happened to crawl up just behind him, found his tail, and thinking that in spite of its hairiness it might be worth trying, took a tremendous grip of it. Gibber let loose a squeal of pain and went spinning round and round, chasing his tail, with the big crab at the end of it flying like a ball at the end of a string. It let go in the end and shot away into the dark, but Gibber, after that, was wary of crabs, and used to give warning by loud whimpering if ever one of them came near him.

The crabs made a queer, disturbed supper of it for everybody. It was not safe for anyone to put a scrap of pemmican or a bit of biscuit on the ground even for a moment while drinking. It was gone at once. There was no difficulty in getting rid of any unwanted scraps.

“They’ll be much better than we are at tidying up after a meal,” said Susan.

“That’s all right so long as they don’t do their tidying up before we’ve had a chance,” said Captain Flint. “That was a perfectly good bit that one just got, the one with the big eyes that’s chewing it up now.”

“Was it a bit you were keeping till the last?” asked Roger gravely.

“I don’t know about that,” said Captain Flint, “but it was far too good a bit for any crab.”

The crabs were a nuisance at night, too, when the diggers had settled down in their tent. But they were not a nuisance to everybody. John was much more tired than he knew after sailing Swallow round from Bill’s Landing to Duckhaven. Careless of crabs and deaf to the noise of the surf, he fell asleep the moment he had wriggled down into his sleeping-bag. Peggy, too, slept almost at once. Susan lay awake for a time, thinking of how the feeding and cooking was best to be done while in camp, and going through the list she had in her mind of the things that she hoped had not been forgotten. Suddenly she started up and flung a small crab across the tent and out into the night. She had felt it crawling over her bag. Titty and Roger stayed awake for a little while after that, waiting to see if the crabs would not begin exploring them too. But they, like Susan, went to sleep before they meant to. Captain Flint had spent some time after supper in walking up and down the sandy beach in the dusk, disturbing the fireflies, and treading, perhaps, on the very place where Peter Duck’s treasure had been buried so long ago by the captain and the mate of the Mary Cahoun. The others were all in their sleeping-bags, and most of them were already asleep when he came back to the tent and lay down across the mouth of it, to discourage invaders. He lay there, planning to-morrow’s diggings, but was so often disturbed by small crabs, who wanted to know what he was made of, that in the end he got up and banged about with one of the wooden shovels and threw a lot of crabs down towards the water. After that there was peace. It was Captain Nancy, the Terror of the Seas, the successful leader of the land party, who lay awake the longest, listening to the noise of the surf along the shore, and thinking of crabs. She hated the thought of live crabs. She hated the thought of dead ones. Most of all she hated the feel of them. Everything she touched seemed to be crab, and she was only just in time to stop herself from waking everybody else with a wild yell when the hem of her own sleeping-bag happened to tickle her chin. “Jibbooms and bobstays!” she said to herself, “but that would never have done. Worse than Peggy in a thunderstorm!” She chuckled at her escape and soon after that had forgotten all about the crabs. The noise of the surf seemed now to come from under the bows of a great ship moving before a gale of wind. Nancy was steering the Wild Cat on, on, and on, among tremendous seas. She could not have had a happier dream.